Marcel Proust

The Fictions of Life and of Art

Second Edition

Leo Bersani

Description

Leo Bersani is an eminent literary critic whose influential work spans half a century. His vast, in many ways unclassifiable, oeuvre has traversed and blurred the boundaries of the disciplines of modern French literature, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, art history, film theory, philosophical aesthetics, and masculinity studies and sexuality studies. Oxford University Press published Bersani's first book, on Proust, in 1965, but the work has long been out of print. This new edition comes in response to a recent renewal of interest among philosophers of literature, among others, and features a new preface from the author.

Marcel Proust

The Fictions of Life and of Art

Leo Bersani

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter OneFantasies of the Self and the WorldI. "Je n'étais plus qu'un coeur qui battait"II. Self-effacement and self-projectionIII. The vulnerable self and its many deaths

Chapter TwoThe Anguish and Inspiration of JealousyI. The mystery of other people's desiresII. Jealousy and the tortured imaginationIII. Strategies to immobilize the "êtres de fuite," and "les joies de la solitude"IV. From the lover's anguish to the novelist's possessions

Chapter ThreeThe Language of LoveI. The loved one's absence from the lover's desiresII. The self as an "appareil vide": a critique of psychological analysisIII. The "notes fondamentales" from the perspective ofmemory: psychological analysis reinstatedIV. The monologue of love as a dialogueV. The merging of fantasy and realism

Chapter FourSocial Contexts: Observation and InventionI. The aristocracy's glamorII. Society as a work of art: the poetry of the pastIII. Reflections of Marcel's psychology in the social worldIV. "Le royaume du néant"V. Variety of characterization and the general lawsVI. Marcel the character and Proust the author

Chapter FiveMarcel's Vocation I. The artist and the "résidu réel" of personality II. Involuntary memory and the work of artIII. The "accent" of individuality in literary styleIV. Metaphor: "les surfaces sont devenues réfléchissantes"